Customer Success Story

Outletcity Metzingen transforms the shopping experience

Outletcity strives to offer visitors the best shopping experience across any touchpoint. To achieve greater digitalization of the shopping experience, it deployed Juniper wireless networking, powered by Mist AI. The Wi-Fi covers 40,000 square meters of retail floor space as well as outdoor areas and parking garages.

Great Wi-Fi is particularly important for Outletcity’s many international visitors. Optimized Wi-Fi also supports Outletcity’s mobile app and loyalty club as well as retail analytics, and COVID-safe shopping.

Company	Outletcity Metzingen
Industry	Retail
Products used	AP21, AP41, AP61, BT11
Region	EMEA

Customer Success At-a-glance

Shoppers per year (pre-pandemic) had perfect internet connectivity

Square meters of retail floor space is connected to Wi-Fi to enable digital shopping

Innovative digital services, including loyalty club, digital queue management, and upcoming location-based engagement services

Omnichannel management to enable location-based services

Challenge

Exceptional retail experiences

“Outletcity Metzingen’s vision is to offer every guest the best shopping experience at any touchpoint, which inspires us to work every day with the spirit of passion and innovation,” says Simon Drees, director of omnichannel services and innovations at Outletcity Metzingen

Digital elements, including Outletcity’s online shop, the Outletcity Club app, and interactive screens at partner brands like Tommy Hilfiger, enable online purchases, blurring the boundaries between in-store and digital retail experiences. Wi-Fi also enables innovative digital solutions like digital queue management, which is a game changer in these times of coronavirus.

The experience begins the moment shoppers arrive. Parking is plentiful, but people can also hop on a shuttle bus from Stuttgart. Personal shoppers can help with luxury brands, and onsite childcare is a fun experience for the kids. And of course, there’s free Wi-Fi.

Outletcity’s previous Wi-Fi solution was simply too limited to support its vision of today’s retail experience. “To achieve greater digitalization of the shopping experience, we needed an excellent network infrastructure,” Drees says.“A Juniper network enables us to deliver that experience.”

Solution

Simplify and scale wi-fi

Outletcity relies on Juniper Wireless Services driven by Mist AI. The Wi-Fi covers 40,000 square meters of retail floor space, as well as outdoor areas and parking garages.

The simplicity and scalability of Juniper networking and the Juniper Mist cloud architecture is a powerful advantage for the scope and complexity of Outletcity’s vision. The Juniper Series of High-Performance Access Points work with the Mist cloud architecture and Mist AI to deliver exceptional network user experiences and to automate and simplify network operations for the IT team. Juniper’s wireless solution met all of Outletcity’s requirements for optimized Wi-Fi to support digital retail experiences.

A key factor in choosing Juniper was the design of the Juniper Access Points, which converge Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, and IoT. Integrated and patented virtual Bluetooth LE (BLE) technology makes it easier for Outletcity to roll out future shopper engagement services without having to deploy and manage an overlay network of battery-powered BLE beacons.

“We intend to use the Bluetooth beacon functionality in Juniper Access Points to create a better shopping experience,” Drees says.

Virtual Bluetooth LE is critical to efficiently scale digital engagement. “Battery-powered Bluetooth beacons are a nightmare on an operating level,” Drees says. “It wouldn’t be possible to offer an interactive push messaging feature with battery-powered beacons. Virtual Bluetooth beacons are integrated into Juniper Access Points, and it’s why we chose Juniper Mist.

Outcome

Grow customer loyalty

Outletcity increased its Wi-Fi coverage tenfold in 2020 and saw a dramatic increase in the use of its mobile app. With the first phase complete, Drees and Stelter are turning their attention to expand Wi-Fi coverage to even more buildings and outdoor areas in 2021.

The team is exploring new ways to engage shoppers with realtime indoor location services, such as location-based proximity notifications for special offers and coupons. The Juniper Mist User Engagement cloud service uses the virtual BLE capability of the Juniper Access Points and cloud-based machine learning to make location services more accurate and simpler to deploy.

“We will develop applications that take advantage of the Juniper Access Points with virtual Bluetooth,” Stelter says. “We are very interested in using the location services technology.”

"To achieve greater digitalization of the shopping experience, we needed an excellent network infrastructure. A Juniper network enables us to deliver that experience."

Simon Drees Director of Omnichannel Services and Innovations, Outletcity Metzingen

At the Juniper Global Summit, hear from Outletcity Metzingen to learn how they boosted customer experience with AI-driven networking from Juniper Networks. (17:19)